Meditations on Violence. Rory Miller
Using a firearm as an example.
Looking at it like that, however, is a fundamental flaw in thinking. To work from technique to situation is backwards. The parameters, in this case “level of surprise” and “acceptable damage,” dictate the matrix. Each box in the matrix represents a type of situation. To go through life being very skilled at one or two aspects of the matrix, and hoping the violence you run into will happen to match your boxes, is dangerous and yet very common.
Here’s a rule for life: You don’t get to pick what kinds of bad things will happen to you. You may prepare all your life to take on a cannibalistic knife-wielding sociopath. You may get stuck with a soccer riot. Or a road rage incident with a semi. Or a pickup full of baseball bat swinging drunks. Or nothing at all. You don’t get to choose.
The purpose of the tactical matrix is to introduce regular people to the idea that violence is complex. For martial artists, it is important to understand that preparing for one thing is not preparing for all things. For citizens watching the news, trying to figure out if what an officer did was the right thing, it’s important to understand that not everything can be solved with a wristlock or a few kind words. Violence is complex.
The tactical matrix here is NOT an answer or a guide. It is an example. It’s not even an example of types of fights. It is a first step in demonstrating complexity. The matrix can be extended infinitely. Multiple bad guys? Three ways that can break down—my side outnumbers you, your side outnumbers me or we’re even. The matrix now has 36 boxes. Weapons? I have a weapon, you have a weapon, we both do or neither of us do. Four options and the matrix jumps to 144 boxes.
Got it? Good, ‘cause now we’re going to get complicated.
section 1.2: the strategic matrix: what martial arts tries to be
A New York Times article dated June 7, 2005 describes a video of an officer in a traffic stop taking fire from the driver and his partner running away. The officer who ran away chose the perfect option for self-defense. It was not the best option for his partner. It was not what he was trained and expected to do. He was trained and expected to engage the threat.
Officers on patrol avoid hand-to-hand encounters. Fights are dangerous. Even when you win, there is a possibility of injury, exposure to blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis, or a lawsuit. Within that context, there are two distinctive hand-to-hand skills that an officer needs. In the ugly, surprise situation, taking damage and unprepared, the officer needs brutal close-quarters survival skills. Putting handcuffs on an unruly drunk who doesn’t want to go to jail but doesn’t really want to hurt you requires different skills, different techniques, and a different mindset.
Sometimes there are more. A SWAT sniper needs a crystal clear thought process and the ability to deal with hours of boredom and discomfort. The point man on an entry team doesn’t need or use the same techniques or mindset as the sniper, isn’t interested in semi-compliant handcuffing and damn well better not be surprised if he works for me. He is the “surprisor.”
In just one profession, four different skill sets for dealing with physical conflict. Not one of them is like dueling, sparring, or waging a war.
Martial arts try to do more than that. Some studios promise self-defense skills and tournament trophies, discipline and self-discovery, fitness and confidence, and even spiritual growth and enlightenment.
How well do these goals really mesh?
Cardiovascular fitness is extremely important for health and longevity and should be the cornerstone of any fitness regimen, yet fighting for your life is profoundly anaerobic. Whether you had a good breakfast will have a greater effect on your endurance thirty seconds into the fight (and thirty seconds is a long time in an ambush) than your ability to run a marathon.
Spiritual growth, the measure of many modern martial arts, is a difficult concept to pin down. I once asked my sensei in Jujutsu if there was a spiritual discipline associated with Sosuishitsu-ryu. Dave said, “Oh. Sure. The dead guy doesn’t get to go to church. Don’t try to read too much into this, Rory. It’s not a way of life. It’s a collection of skills a samurai might need if he wanted to go home to his family.”
Martial arts and martial artists often try to do it all. They teach self-defense and sparring and streetfighting and fitness and personal development, as if they were the same thing. They aren’t even related.
Very, very different things get lumped under the general heading of “violence.” Two boxers in a contest of strategy, strength, skill, and will. A drunken husband beating his wife. Two highschoolers punching it out in the parking lot. A mental health professional trying to hold down a schizophrenic so that a sedative can be administered. An officer walking into a robbery in progress finds himself in a shoot-out. Soldiers entering a building in hostile territory. A rapist pushing in the partially open door of an apartment. An entry team preparing to serve a search warrant on a drug house with armed suspects. A Victorian era duel with small swords.
Matrix of Martial Arts and Violence: Differences of Type
Because they involve people in conflict and people get hurt, we lump them together as violence, but they aren’t the same and the skills and mindset from one situation don’t carry over automatically to the other.
Self-defense is clearly my focus in this book. What is it? It is recovery from stupidity or bad luck, from finding yourself in a position you would have given almost anything to prevent. It is difficult to train for because of the surprise element and because you may be injured before you are aware of the conflict. The critical element is to overcome the shock and surprise so that you can act, to “beat the freeze.” Self-defense is about recovery. The ideal is to prevent the situation. The optimal mindset is often a conditioned response that requires no thought (for the first half-second of the attack) or a focused rage.
The duel is out of fashion in our day and age. It was (and occasionally is) a glorified Monkey Dance (See Section 3.1) forced by society. It was a contest to see who could better uphold the standards of the day, thus it was fought over insults and unacceptable behavior and not more material injury. It was possibly more about show than survival. There was a “right” way to win. This still happens in rare incidents of “dojo arashi” when martial artists go to other martial arts schools to challenge the instructors. The early UFC bouts also tried to take on this element in the “style versus style” but they were very different.
Can we use the skills, mindset, and strategies of the duel in a self-defense situation?
Sport is a contest between two people; different than the duel because it is something the practitioners seek and not something they feel they must do to preserve their place in society. It is admirable, to me, because